Attachmate says that Novell's openSUSE project will continue to operate as it always has.
With Attachmate shelling out $2.2bn acquire Novell, SUSE Linux customers and contributors to the openSUSE project are understandably nervous about what Attachmate is planning for the community development that underpins SUSE Linux.
In wake …

Haven't we all heard this before.

No kidding!

It's highly unlikely Microsoft helped Attachmate to raise those billions just to let them carry on distributing SUSE Linux. The question for those Linux customers and contributors is : Do you really trust Microsoft ?

In my opinion, Attachmate will be compensated for strangling SUSe Linux and for acting as a lightning rod facing the wrath of the FOSS community while Microsoft will come clean and deplore the loss of a worthy competitor while at the same time being busy wheeling their canons in close range to Red Hat front doors.

De-tach mate!

This smells like trouble, best to avoid all Novell-backed technologies. These new bosses will most probably sue, or sell them into pieces for others to sue. The reason I'm prognosticating this is because the 'hedgies' are in and they do not have a proven tech-based track record thus far.

SuSE lInUx.

I've enjoyed being a sUse LiNux customer since I bought a V8 box set (having also tried Red Hat and Mandrake back then). I use it at work, and at home. More recently I've tried Ubuntu and others at home. If SuSe does go end of life, then in due course I'll replace it with another Linux, and it will probably have more predictable capitalisation in the nAmE, which will hopefully keep AManFromArse happy. But it'll still be a Linux and it will not be Windows. Linux will live on, and whatever OpensUsE may have brought to the GPL table will live on too.

In summary: spit happens. There is life beyond Windows, Office, and Studio. Try it, you might like it (but don't tell IT, they won't understand).

I'll wait for MSFT To Swing The Patent Club

That will make the OS community build lots of encrypted information sharing systems, a distributed search engine and many more innovations. TOR and GNUNET are only a glimpse of the future to come.

OS coders will start to create the most nasty viruses ever seen and will share lots of intelligence and methods of subverting Windows, not for gain but to hurt the MSFTers. The FOSS viruses will be magnitudes more powerful than all the crap the Russkies manage to make.

"OS coders will start to create the most nasty viruses"

That's a bizarre conspiracy theory

But more likely, it'll go the same way it has for years: Lots of wailing, a lot of infringement, some high-profile suits, a few patents thrown out, and a moderate amount of research into creating improved processes that aren't under corporate patent protection.